Paper - Drip Irrigation to be Infrastructure Industry
B.H. Jain, Chairman,
Jain Irrigation Systems Limited, Jalgaon
Abstract
Water is an important input in the cultivation and subsistence of all plant life. A highly efficient and irrigated cropping system alone can sustain agriculture for India’s increasing population. The water is a crucial input not only for the development of agriculture but also for the development of economy as a whole. Owing to injudicious use of canal water a considerable cultivated area about 20 million ha are suffering from water logging and salinity problems. About 42% of the total area are subjected to water and wind erosion. To overcome these problems, the available water should be used judiciously and efficiently. It is imperative to increase the efficiency of water use and thereby agricultural production per unit of water and land. New water saving and better water utilisation technologies have been introduced in the recent past. Among these, drip method of irrigation (DMI) has wider acceptance. The DMI can help improve water use efficiency even under dam can system. It has been estimated that by DMI the irrigation potential can be increased by five times with the existing water resources. However, the DMI has not caught on in India on large scale. The administration of subsidy, quality of the product and after sales service from some of the manufacturers, lack of training and demonstration on the part of implementing agencies, poor bank finance support are some of the major reasons for the slow development of the otherwise advanced technology so vital to the national interest.
Development of sound infrastructure is essential for adoption of any hi-tech inputs in agriculture. The hi-tech agroinputs such as tissue culture plants, genetically superior planting material, liquid and water-soluble solid fertilsers, integrated pest management etc. can be gainfully adopted along with DMI to get maximal benefit.
Saving of water through DMI costs much less than creation of fresh irrigation potential. DMI ensures users participation and reduces Government’s financial burden. As such the subsidy being advanced needs to be treated as investment in agricultural infrastructure. Since irrigation is an infrastructure industry, it would only be logical to include DMI in the same status.
The paper discusses the advantages of DMI in detail and how it saves not only water but increases the yield, quality of the crop and thereby the GDP of the country and pleads for including DMI as an infrastructure industry.
